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Constipation is extremely common with the Hashimoto's condition. So why does... Is it related? Yes. I would say that Hashimoto's is considered probably the number two cause of constipation. Number one cause is chronic stress. And then after that, you can go into all of the things that occur. But Hashimoto's, from my understanding, goes at constipation in two different ways. The primary way that Hashimoto's causes constipation is it alters the physiology of your brainstem. And without getting too into the weeds, we do functional neurology here as well as functional medicine. So they kind of go together, brain function neurology. So essentially, it alters the ability of your brainstem to dampen stress responses. In fact, it increases stress responses, which then can overwhelm relaxation responses. Relaxation responses are known as parasympathetic responses. So basically, if you're in a chronic fight response, let's put Hashimoto's over here for a second.

If you're in a stress response, the number one cause of constipation, the stress response basically shuts down your relaxation response. When you're in fight/flight, you're not supposed to be relaxed. It's a different chemistry. And the Hashimoto's does a similar thing to that parasympathetic relaxation response. You may or may not realize it because a lot of you sit on the toilet thinking when you have to go to the bathroom and go, and you're pushing and all that type of stuff. Where, just saying, if you were kind of relaxed, started doing some deep breathing, start meditating, whatever it is that you relax, you would find your bowels would move a lot easier because it is a relaxation response. So essentially, it shuts down the vagus nerve, which allows that relaxation response in what's called your enteric nervous system. There's a separate nervous system.

Some of you have heard the phrase, "We have two brains. There's a second brain in the gut." That's what we're talking about. And that second brain is in the muscular lining of the gut that is right below where all the little digestive areas villi are, and then it gets tight. When the relaxation response is interfered with, the muscles become tight, and then they don't work. There's this part of the nervous system, they're called migrating motor system, and the migrating motor system helps you to migrate your feces out to the toilet. Okay? So that kind of gets slowed down, paralyzed. And that's really... There is a huge connection. Also, Hashimoto's is called, some people call it Hashimoto's hypothyroid disease because probably 75% of you have Hashimoto's hypothyroid as opposed to the small percentage that are the thin Hashimoto's patient and hyperthyroid, hypothyroid patient, everything slows down.

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